


to fly

by acacias



Category: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Bittersweet, Canon-Typical Violence, Future Fic, Gen, Mortality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-18 03:53:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28736790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acacias/pseuds/acacias
Summary: “So if you’ve lived a long time for a Rito,” Sola says suddenly, urgently, “then -”Zora live for a long time, longer than the other peoples of Hyrule. Everyone knows that. So why is it that she’s never really thought about it before now?“- how long do most Rito live?” she asks finally, and when Revali tells her most don’t make a century she gasps; a hundred years, for an entire lifetime, isnothing.time, the devourer of all things.[ feat. revali and his zora daughter; background miphvalink ]
Relationships: Link/Mipha/Revali (Legend of Zelda), Revali (Legend of Zelda) & Original Character(s)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 16





	to fly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sturms_sun_shattered](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sturms_sun_shattered/gifts).



> happy late birthday to my dear friend and beta, sun!! (〃ﾉωﾉ)*✲ﾟ*｡⋆♡ོ
> 
> while i suspect this might not be completely your speed, you did inspire me to write it, and also it turned out a lot more bittersweet than i intended, so perhaps there's something in here for you after all... :3
> 
> anyway heartfelt thanks for all you do for me, and please enjoy older revali and his zora daughter <3

Early autumn in Lanayru, and first light finds Revali flying the same route over Zora’s Domain he takes most mornings: over the Veiled Falls and Ralis Pond, resplendent with the beauty of the season, to meet with Zora’s River, each gentle curve, each sharp turn of its meandering course intimately familiar, its surface livened by brief flashes of white, fish leaping from the water.

Revali had never expected to call anywhere but Rito Village home, couldn’t say when exactly it was that he began to think of Zora’s Domain as such - though there can be no doubt that it is, after so many years; and in any case, those in Rito Village who know him as anything other than a legend are few, now, and still fewer with each passing year.

Riding a warm updraft over the Bank of Wishes, his attention is caught by the stone monuments below, gleaming palely amid tall golden rushes, the latest commemorating the Calamity’s final defeat, and he finds it somehow reassuring to think that he, also, is part of the ongoing history they record: that many hundreds of years from now some Zora yet to be born will look on those monuments, and others yet to be added, and read his name - his, Link’s and Mipha’s, and the names of their children, and theirs, on and on, perhaps forever.

Well. Not forever, because of course nothing is. But perhaps for long enough.

But the sun is already cresting over the mountains to the east, their peaks outlined in a blaze of gold; he ought to return, and so he turns back towards the Domain, a pale and lustrous jewel amid the amber and russet of the autumnal landscape.

Revali alights outside the royal chambers, and almost as soon as he lands he’s accosted by his eldest daughter, spear in hand; apparently some lizalfos have made camp on one of the small islands near Luto’s Crossing, preventing anyone from fishing in the waters nearby. Revali half-listens to her tell him about it, pleasantly distracted by the way the deep grey-blue of her scales mirrors that of his own feathers, and by the other small ways in which she resembles him: something in the way she stands, the way she moves her hands when she speaks, reminds him of himself, fills him with a sort of melancholic nostalgia.

“- so I said I’d go, because Ralis keeps asking me to help him look in the archives for some ancient old text or other and I’m _not_ interested, and anyway I need the practice,” Sola says, turning her spear idly in her hands, and when she fixes her bright amber gaze on Revali it returns him to the present. “Want to come with me?”

Really, there’s no need for her to ask; time spent with her and her siblings is precious, and it’s rare that Revali passes up the opportunity, lizalfos notwithstanding.

“Lead the way,” he replies, and they go.

Bazz stands guard at the entrance to the Domain, and as they pass him on their way out he turns his head to look at them, otherwise maintaining his rigid posture.

“Be careful out there,” he says, and although he adds, as an afterthought, “- both of you,” it’s clear to Revali that the words are, as always, meant more for him than Sola. At one time he might have taken offence at the insinuation that he might be anything other than, but he’s inclined, now, to accept the entreaty for what it is: the kind concern of a friend, a gentle reminder that he is not invulnerable and never was, although once he might have imagined himself to be so.

“Will do,” Revali replies evenly, in what has become a ritual exchange of sorts, and as he and Sola step onto the Great Zora Bridge a gentle breeze whispers through the supple branches of the willows nearby, golden in the mid-morning light.

“Why is he like that?” Sola asks, part of the way across the bridge, safely out of hearing range. “It’s always ‘be careful’ this, ‘stay sharp’ that. It’s some lizalfos, not the Great Calamity -”

Revali laughs softly.

“That’s going back a while,” he says, amused, tilting his head slightly to look up at her, some sentimental part of him wondering where this towering Zora came from and what happened to the hatchling that used to cling to his back as he took flight over the East Reservoir, squeaking with delight, claws pressing like little pins into his shoulders. “I’ve lived a long time for a Rito, and Bazz - worries, is all, not that he has any need to.”

Sola looks at Revali, and somehow what she sees isn’t quite what she expects to, the blue of his plumage less vivid than she remembers; compelled to reach out and touch his crest, she brushes her fingertips against feathers starting to turn silver at the tips, drawing a quiet sound of mild displeasure from Revali, able to guess easily enough what it is that’s caught her attention.

“I blame your sister for that,” he says dryly. Dorepha, although the very image of her mother, takes resolutely after Link in all other respects, tearing around the Domain on what appears to be an ongoing mission to fight or eat, or fight _and_ eat, every living creature that crosses her path.

“Don’t tell her I said that,” Revali adds, and Sola withdraws her hand, smiles toothily, and for a short time they continue in silence.

“So if you’ve lived a long time for a Rito,” Sola says suddenly, urgently, afraid that if she doesn’t say the words now then she might never, “then -”

Zora live for a long time, longer than the other peoples of Hyrule. Everyone knows that. So why is it that she’s never really thought about it before now?

“- how long do most Rito live?” she asks finally, the words leaving her in a nervous rush, and when Revali tells her most don’t make a century she gasps; a hundred years, for an entire lifetime, is _nothing_.

“Okay,” she replies, trying and failing to keep the fear and anxiety suddenly clawing at her insides from her voice. “But you’re… different, because -”

“Purah can explain it to you better than I can.” Revali comes to a stop, takes Sola’s hand, and with his free hand brushes his primaries tenderly over the back of the hand held in his by way of unspoken apology. Perhaps that had been a little blunt. “But, yes, I am different.” He winks at her. “Special.”

Sola rolls her eyes at him, more out of habit than anything else. “Okay. So you’re not going to, you know -”

“One day.” Revali has never believed in sugarcoating anything, nor in making promises that can’t be kept. “But not soon, I hope.”

“Okay.” Sola looks at him intently; doesn’t take her hand from his until they start to move again. “Good.” - and she walks closely by Revali’s side, closer than before, the rest of the way across the bridge.

Once they’re across she looks at him again, and he steels himself for further questions on the subject of his own mortality; but instead she comes to a stop, places a hand on Revali’s shoulder.

“Over there,” she says, pointing with her free hand out towards a small island in the near distance, the blaze of a campfire visible on an exposed sandbank, a trio of lizalfos gathered around it, two more in the water nearby. “See them?”

“I may be old,” Revali says archly, “but need I remind you that my eyesight is still _far_ superior to yours -”

“Off we go, then,” Sola chimes, not waiting for him to finish, and she sprints to the cliff’s edge and dives gracefully to the water below, Revali taking off after her with a muted sound of vexation, following where she leads.

One of the lizalfos gathered around the fire is taken by surprise when Sola leaps from the lake in a rush of white water, driving the point of her spear into its abdomen in the same fluid movement, its two companions hissing and screeching, abandoning their places beside the fire to dash for the weapons leaning up against a large piece of driftwood half-hidden in the rushes at the water’s edge as the two in the water rush for the bank.

Of the four, two go down almost immediately, falling sharply to the sand, each with an arrow lodged in its throat, leaving Sola the remaining two to deal with: one caught on the point of her spear as it turns to rush her, brandishing a forked blade in short-lived triumph, one flung swiftly to the ground, its legs swept out from under it with the shaft of Sola’s spear as she turns, and a split second later she thrusts the point of the weapon into its throat, and it hisses and writhes for a moment before going still, its eyes turning cold and lustreless.

“Looks as though I win,” Sola calls buoyantly, a foot on the dead lizalfos’ chest as she pulls her spear from the body.

Revali touches down in the reeds a few paces from her, returns the arrow he’d been ready to loose to the quiver at his hip.

“Thought you said you needed the practice,” he replies evenly. “Well done, by the way.”

Sola moves towards the fire, bends to pick up a spear fallen nearby, a simple wooden shaft with a roughly fashioned spearhead affixed to its end, a Hyrule bass impaled upon its point.

“Well, you helped,” she concedes, holding the weapon out to Revali so that he might take the still-warm fish from its point. “Here. No point in letting this go to waste.”

Revali takes it, and settles beside the fire.

“What about you?” he asks, but she’s gone, wading purposefully into the lake, where for a few moments she remains, knee-deep in the water, perfectly still, her spear grasped in both hands and raised above the water’s surface, poised to strike downward; and then she brings it down, swift, decisive, afterwards returning to the fire, a second bass speared on the point of her weapon.

Revali watches as she settles beside him, taking the fish from the point of her spear and laying the weapon in the sand before her, watches her eat, swallowing her catch in two swift bites: it seems only recently that he could hold her in his hands, a tiny, fragile thing in need of his protection, and somehow he hadn’t expected that to change quite so quickly, hadn’t expected the years to fly so.

Sola, perhaps sensing his gaze on her, turns her head to look at him, the tip of her tongue darting from her mouth to lick at her fingertips.

“What?” she asks, and he shakes his head, throws the delicate fish bones in his hand, picked clean, into the fire.

“Nothing.” Revali looks into the flames for a moment, then stands, slings his bow across his shoulder, puts out the fire with a vigorous flap of his wings. “Let’s go home, shall we? And you can help your brother find whatever it was he was looking for this morning, if he hasn’t already.”

Sola picks up her spear and gets to her feet, giving him a distinctly unimpressed look he can’t help but laugh at, and they go to the shoreline, Sola securing her spear to her back.

“Do you remember,” Revali says despite himself, as she steps into the shallows, “when you were small, and I’d take you flying -”

“Of course.” Sola smiles fondly. “Never anywhere else but over the reservoir, no matter how much I pleaded -”

“Of course not! What if you’d fallen?” Revali looks distraught, his feathers bristling, the thought of it turning him cold even now.

“You wouldn’t have let me. You’d have caught me if I had.” Sola looks at him softly for a brief moment, before her smile turns sharp. “Anyway. What about it?”

What indeed? Revali shrugs, caught slightly off-guard by the question.

“Couldn’t do it now,” he says, and Sola laughs, looks at him as though she finds him completely absurd, and continues into the lake - and when the water reaches her waist she stops, looking back over her shoulder at Revali.

“Get on.”

“What?” Revali, like all Rito, prefers to avoid getting too closely acquainted with bodies of water if he can help it; difficult, in a place like Zora’s Domain, but he does his best. “What for?”

“It’s a surprise.” Sola’s smile is the same one Mipha wears when she’s devising some scheme or other. “Get on.”

“Fine.” Revali wades into the water after her, breathing out a soft sound of discontent at the way his talons sink slightly into the riverbed, silty and changeful, and - gets on, Sola allowing the current to take them slowly out into the deeper water as Revali settles on her back, grasping her shoulders, surprised by the apparent ease with which she bears his weight.

“Now hold on and don’t let go,” Sola says playfully, and Revali barks out a laugh even as the words, the same ones he would say to her when she was small and would beg him to take her flying, pull at his heart. “Do you promise?”

“I promise,” he replies, and she starts to move quickly, easily against the current, back the way they came, pushing through the drifting leaves covering the water’s surface, ochre and bronze -

\- and before Revali can protest they’re approaching the falls at the halfway point of the Great Zora Bridge, cascading with breathtaking ferocity, wild, a vaporous mist enfolding them and the thunderous roar of the waterfall drowning out the world as Sola accelerates towards the falls, Revali holding on to her for dear life - and suddenly they’re ascending, and when Sola reaches the waterfall’s apex she keeps going, leaping skyward from the turbulent water, and for a few glorious seconds they’re flying together again, the Domain and its surrounds laid out below them and only the sky above, before gravity starts to pull them back down.

Revali does let go, despite his earlier promise, before Sola hits the water again - already soaked through, he has no desire to be submerged completely - and despite the water weighing him down manages to glide to the bank, Sola following, pulling herself from the water to find him shaking himself dry, wings extended, laughing, looking exactly as she remembers him: ageless, vibrant, full of life.

Sola appears at Revali’s side, gives him an exuberant smile.

“Want to do it again?” she asks, and he gives her a look that tries for severe but falls just slightly short, the same one that meant, as a child, she’d done something of which he perhaps ought to have disapproved, but which he mostly found amusing.

“No,” he answers firmly - but his eyes are alight, his tone subtly pleased. “I _want_ to go home and dry out, if it’s all the same with you -” and on an impulse Sola takes a step closer to him and shakes herself energetically, showering him with water, and he hops away from her with a sharp cry of indignation, flapping his wings, fixing her with a baleful glare that makes her dissolve into helpless laughter.

“Another time, then,” Sola says lightly, and they set off in the direction of home, Revali shaking the last of the water from his wings.

“Another time,” he agrees, brushing a golden leaf fallen from a nearby maple from his shoulder.

Another time. Whatever time there is left to them. Not forever, because of course nothing is, however much he might wish it were so.

But perhaps long enough.


End file.
